Last month Dan did some surgery on Norm’s reclaimed woodstove he got from his in-laws beach cabin, giving it a secondary combustion manifold using outside air.
The idea is to make it burn the gasses released by the wood that conventional stoves waste.
Dan says, “We put in an air supply line piped from the outside to feed the fire so the fire isn’t pulling the warm air from the house’s envelope which helps retain warmth.”
“That air supply then feeds into a manifold overtop of the fire. Dozens of little holes were drilled into a steel tubing manifold I built to spread air out through the stove. A smaller air supply splits off from the manifold at the bottom of the stove, runs across the bottom and to the front of the stove to assist with convection and combustion. Norm will then lines the walls of the stove with firebricks.”
What’s the point of doing all this??
So this fire could burn hotter and more efficiently! š„
Norm reports back post-retrofit saying that “the wood stove system is working perfectly! It probably cleans the smoke up to maybe 50 percent, and burns the gasses out of the emissions as well as increasing efficiency of the burn within the burn chamber – increasing the efficiency from about 80 percent to 95 percent!”
( SO cool! )
Norm continued to say, “You can tell it is a clean burn because the glass stays clean and you have a really cool fire. The actual flame in the stove comes not just from the bottom, but it shoots down from the top – making it a really cool flame from both directions, but it’s not overly hot!”
šø Thanks Norm & Dan for sharing your “sustainability” weekend adventures and photos of your project! š
TC Legend Homes has been recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a 2023 Indoor airPLUS Leader Award winner for our ongoing commitment to building homes with improved indoor air quality through participation in the Indoor airPLUS program.
āCongratulations to all 14 2023 Indoor airPLUS Leader Award winners!ā said David Rowson, Director of EPAās Indoor Environments Division.
āIt is always inspiring to have the opportunity to recognize the incredible work that our partners do every day, from expanding the use of Indoor airPLUS on a national scale, to maintaining strong leadership within their local communities. On behalf of EPA and the Indoor airPLUS team, we would like to congratulate and thank the 2023 Indoor airPLUS Leader Award winners for all of their work in constructing healthier homes for the American consumer”.
This annual award recognizes market-leading organizations who promote safer, healthier, and more comfortable indoor environments by participating in the Inoor airPLUS program.
To learn more about the 2023 Indoor airPLUS Awards and the Indoor airPLUS Program, visit www.epa.gov/indoorairplus
Which way do you run the streets to maximize solar exposure for dense Net ZeroĀ development?
Common wisdom states that the optimal streets run east west, which makes sense if youāre the house on the north side of the street, because thereās nothing shading your house, garden or solar panels. However, living on the south side of the street, you suffer from north facing gardens and probably some shading unless the lots are 5000sf or greater.
Critically, 10 dwelling units (du) per acre is the density with enough inhabitants to support a bus service (*1), a key part of the sustainable urbanist vision for transit, pedestrian & bike use, rather than private cars. An acre is 43500sf.
My conclusion is that the common wisdom is wrong for dense, Net Zero development, that the streets should run north-south.
A Net-Zero house has most of the windows on the south side of the house because south facing windows can be effectively shaded from summertime overheating, and can harvest wintertime solar energy.
Because all the windows are on the south walls, we canāt have another 2-story house immediately to the south as shown in āEast-West 3700ā below, or the valuable direct wintertime sunlight will be prevented from entering & youāll have a house that is gloomy all winter.
Sure, if the lots are big, we can keep the southern house away, as shown in āEast-West 4500ā below, but then we end up with less than 10 du/ acre (du/a) and thereās no bus & everyoneās driving cars.
The āNorth-South 3800ā drawing below shows a 1-story neighbor garage to the south, avoiding shade. Bingo! Thatās a 3800sf lot, and offers 11.34 du/a. Additionally the frontage length is reduced which lowers roadway & utility development costs.
(*1) Transit modes related to residential density (Boris Pushkarev & Jeffry M Zupan)
Thereās a right & a wrong way to design windows on the southside of a house.
The Murphy windows are done the right way, are a bit high, tucked up towards the eaves to admit the low winter sunshine yet shade-out the unwanted high summer sun so it canāt enter the building & warm up the interior.
This means your windows are a bit high and look to the sky.
I battled Ted for years about these windows because I want houses to look at the ground, and, the sky. However after twelve months looking at the ever-changing sky of the Pacific Northwest I am a convert, and a disciple. Itās just fabulous walking into a cool house in hot high summer, knowing that absolutely no sunshine is entering.
In the summer I want to live in a cool, dark cave. In the howling winter I want to live in a bright, warm sanctuary.
The Murphy house brings this contradiction to life, and then adds space to time:
There is 750 square feet of space inside the Murphy house, and there is 600sf of deck-space outside. The two spaces flow easily into each other. How, why, what?
You walk out onto a very modern pale-colored interior-style floor. It feels clean, like a room thatās outside, rather than a deck. Indeed I used to vacuum that floor with the shop vac, and it came up trim with the clean-house feeling. Add good exterior furniture and a partial roof, lights and pots growing peppers in the sunshine & you have a place to go, even itās just to water the peppers. Now Iām drifting in and out, and out and in. Stimulation outside, sanctuary inside. I move between the two feeding my appetites and resting.
As my life progressed from summer into winter I was left inside again, with those three sky-windows pointing up, but now I was looking at dark sky, stars, tungsten-lit clouds and tungsten-lit storms. The Murphy house was flooded with ambient night-light. Planet earth travelling around the sun is tilted, and the Pacific Northwest was at its distance-extreme from the sun; dark & cold, & I knew it.
Hereās the secret: if you put the windows above chest height you donāt need shades for privacy because thereās nothing to see except a head. So now there can always be a view out, so you can see it all.
Iām not sure itās reasonable to write a whole post about 3 windows and a deck, but thatās really where itās at.
The kitchen is worthy of mention because it formed an epic super-social axis around which I could meet new people; I would cook, and all these new dudes would sit at the bar. I think the concept of ādefensible spaceā bluntly describes how the kitchen/ counter combo lent me ease and accommodated new minds.
The very dark bathroom was the deepest and most welcome part of the summer-cave, a heavy earth-tile retreat, darkly contrasting with the bright, bright apartment (delete repeated word).
I never lived in the Murphy house with anyone, and there remain questions in my mind about privacy & the closeness of the bedrooms to the common areas. To my mind Tedās Leong house addresses most of these concerns.
The western light poured through the double doors in the summer; orange and yellow and picked up the yellow fir floors. It was a golden place.
Company Culture Blog: Feat. Nicole’s Extra Curricular Activities
Written by: Nicole Miller
At TC Legend Homes, our crew is dedicated to sustainability and environmentalism even outside of work. One of the ways crew member Nicole shows this dedication is through citizen scientist volunteering. With a degree in Environmental Science and a passion for marine biology, she puts these to work volunteering through RE Sources participating in their Intertidal Monitoring. She has participated in 5 seasons of the monitoring starting in 2014. The monitoring consists of specialists and citizens alike taking data on the intertidal zone at the Cherry Point and Fidalgo Bay aquatic reserves. Specifically looking at things like the beach elevation, substrate and what species are living in each section of the intertidal zone.
In the pacific northwest, we pride ourselves on our beautiful landscape, with the mountains to our East and ocean to our West. We love spending time at both but seem to forget the impacts humans have on these ecosystems or were simply not taught what magical worlds lie within. Thatās where monitoring comes in! These data sets provide snapshots into the health of the intertidal ecosystem which is crucial as the globe experiences higher temperatures. These aquatic reserves are also located around the refineries, which means the data will act as a baseline in case there is ever any kind of oil spill or other catastrophic event. That way the refineries can be properly held accountable, and we know what species were affected.
Firstly, letās look at what even constitutes the intertidal zone. The intertidal zone is the point between high tide and low tide, otherwise known as the foreshore. The backshore is the portion that only gets covered in water in extreme high tides/weather events and is often where we hang out on the beach.
For the surveys, profile lines are setup running from the backshore to the water line and transect line are run perpendicular at the +1, 0 and -1 tides. On those transects, quadrats are placed to take data from.
Hereās an example of what one of those quadrats may look like.
The goal is to identify everything big and small. On the left is a moon glow anemone and on the right in the circle is an itty-bitty sculpin (fish) blending in with the shell debris and sand. Notice the barnacles attached the rock below the sculpin and the green seaweed.
The specialists flipped this rock and found multiple different sea stars, a chiton (the plated creature toward the top of the rock) and sea sponges (notice the orange and white splotches). Disclaimer: if you flip a rock on the beach, please be sure to *gently* place the rock *exactly* back in the orientation in which you found it to ensure the safety of the critters living on and under the rock. Otherwise, you may squash the critters or leave them exposed to dry up and die. And I think we can all agree that we donāt want that!
Keep in mind that you donāt have to lift up rocks to observe some cool critters! Here you can see a couple of purple Pisaster sea stars on the side of the rock and the end of a sea cucumber (orange) poking out from under it. This rock didnāt need to be touched to see these beautiful creatures!
Sometimes youāll see something like this in the middle of a sandy area. These are two sea anemones buried in the sand and protecting themselves during the low tide. Be careful not to step on them! Or any sea critters for that matter.
The intertidal zone is a very biodiverse area that can be fun to explore. Once you know how to look, youāll start noticing more and more life!
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